By Ruth McGurk

San Francisco holds a unique archive for the study of early children's books,
which will interest scholars of printing, parents, artists, writers,
or anyone curious about the book arts. It wasn't until the eighteenth
century that children began to be treated differently from adults
and a special class of literature beyond ABCs was provided for
them.

The George M. Fox Collection of Early Children's
Books is housed at the Marjorie G. and Carl W. Stern Book Arts
and Special Collections Center at the San Francisco Public Library.
Donated in 1978, it consists of over 2000 volumes of mostly nineteenth-century
picture books. It was donated by the father of George King Fox
of Pacific Book Auctions who also serves as the auctioneer at PCBA's
biennial auction. Fox the elder worked for the Milton Bradley toy
company, which had purchased the children's book publishing company
McLoughlin Brothers. Fox acquired the archives of McLoughlin Brothers,
which itself was the successor to Elton and Company, publisher
of valentines, toy and juvenile books. Fox then expanded his sights
to early color children's books in general.

For those of a scholarly bent, the Fox collection
is an untapped trove of multiple copies of the same titles, nearly
complete runs of long-running series and, of course, the file copies
of the McLoughlin Brothers. Some of the latter are titles acquired
from English publishers, marked up with the editorial and illustrative
changes thought necessary for the American market. Through studying
the collection it is possible to watch publishing tactics take
shape, printing conventions be established, color printing emerge
from its infancy, and the emphasis in children's literature shift
from moral instruction to amusement. McLoughlin Brothers themselves
span the change from the didactic to the diversionary: their emblem
includes the words "Educate and Amuse." The commercial
considerations of a publishing house tilt their view of children
from moral blank slates to potential customers. After all, gaudy
illustrations sell more books than dogma.

For those who find children's books entertaining
on their own account, delving into the collection is its own reward.
Housed as it is in good archival fashion in envelopes within folders
within boxes, there is a deal of unwrapping to be done to get at
the books. The collection is not listed online and the card catalog
is rife with the bibliographical lacunae of the period: few dates,
few authors, fewer illustrators. So I found it more productive
to plunge in than to look for specific items. The books are grouped
by publisher and are shelved chronologically only to the extent
that particular publishers survived for finite periods of time.
I will refer to books by the series and box number in which they
are housed and lastly by folder number. Sometimes there are multiple
books in a folder, so it may take a little effort to find them.